Vietnam and Cambodia

On the Mekong River

The most interesting relic of war is the Reunification Hall,
which used to be the presidential palace. The palace was bombed in
1962, during the American-sponsored coup which removed the
notoriously corrupt Ngo Dinh Diem. His successor, Nguyan Van Thieu,
also corrupt and backed reluctantly by the USA (and described aptly
by Neil Sheehan in Bright Shining Lie as being 'like a Bourbon who
returned after the French Revolution'), lived here until his
departure in 1972. The style is French-kitsch-oriental, and the
ceremonial rooms are airy, filled with elaborate carpets and potted
plants, with many open walkways leading nowhere in particular. On
30 April 1975, a North Vietnamese tank crashed through the gates.
The cabinet of the government of South Vietnam was meeting in a
last emergency session. Around a long table stand the same pale
green stuffed chairs, abandoned.

No place I have encountered gives a more poignant impression of
the futility of empire. I learn here that our guide's family, some
of whom supported South Vietnam, left the country after 1975,
becoming boat people. He tells me that the great American error was
to appoint Catholic puppets in a Buddhist country. 'They didn't
know what they were doing,' he says, in what I now know is the
laconic Vietnamese style.